I am not a sentimental man but
I remember the tallness of some relatives ceiling and the lights around the table where they sat.
I remember the other, squat ceiling where we lined up and my grandmother cried and in the next room there was body laid out.

It is 7pm and my uncle is giving me birthday money.
It is 3am and he's screaming, pepper spraying a man in handcuffs.
In the same way I'll walk home and see them waving their nightsticks and the boy on the corner with his head leaking.
I'll take a different route home and forget it by that evening. Later I'll suddenly remember it forever.
But I am not a sentimental man.

But don't we all know about the created men, the false women

The splashes on an ageing page

The moments of voyeurism with no walls to speak of

The unborn, never been, never beaten ones we follow to see stagger through a room unlike ours, embracing before they even reach the bed

But don't we all feel the flicker at our centre
Of the imperceptible ever changing light that illuminates the words:

*"Days ahead you will be spent
Days ahead you will be weighed up in stone stronger than and words freer than
Days ahead they will play a meagre game of cards with your memory and then put the deck away."

Beer floats
So does glass
And the trains

You pass them every weekday and sooner or later it looks like some sort of tarpaulin or a giant business-white circus tent.
It gets to the point you want to approach one of the security guards and ask how it all stays up there.
But the announcements are on and you have time to keep.

The road goes far across the earth
That's what roads are meant to do
But rush along, away from us
And we'll still find room for you.

Your body chains you to the floor
That's what body's are meant to do
Build it, break it or attempt disguise
And we'll still find room for you.

The sky it howls, the ground it dies
That's what the Earth is meant to do
Crawl through wind and lacerations
And we'll still find room for you.

Your words are rich and mould the air
That's what words are meant to do
Scream defiance down the road
And with your body
And to the sky and soil
And to any and all you captivate
But we'll still find room for you.

There is no exit

If I only could, I would become The Marlboro Man. (You know, the one from those old advertisements)

In my two dimensional prairie I would ****** my horse through canyons and make out with cigarettes.
There would be nothing behind my gaze.

But before long my sharp billboard eyes would see the desperate old face in the sky, still trusting, willing me on for one last time.

So then I'd slump into some 2D shack and drink myself to death.
People would gather around and say "He was a bad sort, wasn't he?
They say he was impotent."

Attractive white fences. Lacerated earth.
Dead houses of wet wood and imagined dreams.
Cold stabbing ridges.
Rushing from my island and pouring open into another's bloodstream. Glass. Antlers. Wheels. Hooves.
Against this I have God's word that I can **** something.
The more today
The less tomorrow.

The Warped Man
He opens his veins and lets invisible blood flow in.

The Warped Soil
From where his **** sinks into the earth like a clenched fist.

The Warped River.
A fake bloodstream. Dumpster of The Soil. Promises. Threats. Velocity. Value.

The Warped Sea
Born outwards, ejected from an invisible heaven. Poisoned by the soil it kisses. Pumped with hypodermic streams.

The Warped Sky
Looks to the sea and follows .
Once a mirror of our potential.
Now it gets ****** a heckles us.

The Warped Child
Mushroom jungle above him.
Dreams of the dust.
Exiled by everything.
Tell him what to breathe and he will inhale it.

The Moon
A silent prodigal lord.
It gave us light to obscure.
It gave us lakes to **** in.
It gave us maps to conquer.
And it once gave us dreams.

A call on the white telephone awakens the room, disturbing the crystal liqueur bottles I will never drink from. She sweeps in from the balcony where she was wistfully overseeing-

All the dogs have fled. On some nights though, I see them in some corner or some alley mouth, a pair of howitzer eyes lying in the bunker of a ruined doorway. Nobody told them it was over.

And in the studios you never see the outdoors, never see that grainy drunken view of the streets, just the pristine suites, a hint of sun and the telephone, the white telephone.

Level the rest I say. Sink and crumble any who were passed over. Cut the power lines, burn the last scraps of food and cut a perfect hole in every cinema screen. Ruins are what we do best.

It didn't happen.
It did.
But it didn't happen.*
But it did.

I sit
No, I lie
Yes
It is New Years Day
There is an ache in my arms
Time runs away when I do not watch
And stares me down if I do so

It is New Years Day
I still lie
Why prepare
Why brace for anything
The morning won't seem possible
The precipice will go unseen
And down below, somebody has poisoned the water

It is New Years Day
No
I cannot answer your questions
No
There will not be a spot of grace
No
There will  be no name yelled in anguish at the last second
No
It has always been too early and too late
Let me lie

So the wind whistles
So the naked trees wave
So the air turns to still life and the grass dies
So the rain sits above me but never falls
So the garden gate swings a little then stops
So a wheelbarrow sits at the foot of the hill, traction now impossible
So the only life I see goes by at 50km an hour
So my thoughts are condensation on a pane of glass
They fog up for a moment, then vanish.

In the morning the wind cuts past us to prove that we exist and that we may fill space.
In the evening the wind erodes the name etched on the headstone and kicks up the soil.
And makes the weeds
Dance.

there are branches fingers of a dead will tendrils waving into a roaring white nothing wine into milk declaring themselves trying to make their realness known but reaching further into nothing and pin pricking out of the air texture to nothing like stained glass on a cage it gave us like in the beginning was the word and the word was like pretending there is an aether and they guard it and if I race through their gaps

Wake in nothing.
Put on my debris.
Cup my hand to The Sun.
Sit in a stone room and touch myself.

and let's be frank (the radio said)
you'll have to know when to skip dinner
and tell your kids to do the same

and you'll have to know (the radio said)
when a bloodstain is a leaking statue
and when it's just a needed leaching

and don't forget (the radio said)
when to export your sins
when to import others
and when to hide them behind stained glass
good for a few decades, sleet proof

and coming up (the radio said)
the new kind of drama that-CLICK-

For best results, turn lights on at 5:30

There must be stifled laughter every ten seconds.

A child must eat this much, shout that much and sleep in an hour.

You must take dishonest, calculated steps across my back.

This much many meals must be missed.

Your chosen (and I didn't say by who) track must be followed to the outskirts of someplace and abandoned for bald hair, stained shirts and hatred diluted by ****** beer.

A measurement of replaceable children must fly off buildings, kick down chairs or barricade themselves in rooms of sweat.

The buildings must grow by a dozen floors, annual, until nobody is left to count them.